Leveraging COBIT2019 to Implement IT Governance in SME Context: Case Study Higher Education Campus A

Abstract

Achieving business and IT alignment has become the aspiration of most organizations nowadays. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are not an exemption as they are also thriving to survive in competitive market using IT. However, implementing all IT control and management components would be excessive with lack of justifiable cost-benefit for SMEs. A tailored governance system based on specificities of SMEs, such as their tendency to have higher vendor risk, limited resources, is necessitated to help the organization focus on its main objectives and strategies. By leveraging COBIT 2019 design toolkit, we support Campus A in establishing a healthy governance and IT management by selecting relevant governance/ management objectives, assessing its current and desired capability level, and recommendations for its improvement. This design toolkit is practical to use with a semi-automated approach through which users will get a scoring for each objective based on associated value inputted for each design factor. However, it is also rigid by design with its predefined and protected formula. To some extent, the resulting score or importance level of certain governance/ management objectives is questionable and lack of justification. Flags or indicators to ‘should-have’ governance/ management objectives regardless of the organization size and type will be useful to prevent omission of essential objectives.